Theological musings inspired by the Spirit and totally Ellen…

I Love my Family

This morning’s sermon. I take as my text, Mark 3:20-35:

I’d like to add my thoughts to the homilist’s comment last week about spirituality replacing religion in twenty-first century lives and mindsets. To my way of thinking, it doesn’t jive – this convenient and expedient idea that one doesn’t need religion, or a faith community to be spiritual or have spirituality. To my way of thinking, it contravenes the Good News – and the Good News, the New Commandment especially – that we love one another as Christ loves us – is the reason we gather together as a family and a community, isn’t it?

Granted, our history shows there were and are people who distanced themselves from society in order to find a path to God and to fully understand the ministry and meaning of Christ, but when it comes down to it, were they really alone? The exodus of Christians who fled the newly recognized and organized church of the fourth century to find beatitude in solitude after the ultimate witness of martyrdom was no longer necessary gave us monasticism – a way to find solitude in prayer and life away from the noisy distraction and temptations of life, and singularly focus on God. Monasteries were communities, however. Those seeking to live a life of simplicity, privation and primarily solitude left civilization as we know it and found an oasis, or secluded valley, even an abandoned cemetery where they would not be disturbed. Yet those desert mothers and fathers weren’t secluded, because after time the Egyptian desert was scattered with Christians seeking solitude, or visited by Christians seeking counsel.

I don’t believe our friend and brother, our redeemer Jesus, gave himself in total love and obedience to God, and made the ultimate sacrifice, in order that we could find our ways separately and apart.

We are invited by Christ, we are called, each one of us, to walk in love throughout our neighborhoods, our lives, and live out the Gospel and to do it together. We have as our model Jesus and the Apostles, who show us what the family of God is like.

We are with Jesus when he returns home to Nazareth. He’s getting it from all sides again. He’s accused of being a creature of Satan and his family shows up where he’s preaching. Mark tells us that he’s come home and in the intervening time he’s attracted wide attention and a large following. Perhaps he’s just sat down to eat the first meal in days, and is interrupted by the crowd descending on Nazareth and Mary’s doorstep. When his family seeks to hold him back from addressing the detractors and the crowd they think he’s gone out of his mind. It only gets worse when the remarks about Satan come up. The family is probably wondering what’s gotten into their son and brother since the last time they saw him, and following behind the crowd to where Jesus has gone. When his mother and brothers seek him out, he says, “Who are my mother and my brothers?”

Ouch. Now that has got to hurt. This isn’t your blue-eyed, pretty boy Jesus smiling down at you from a nineteenth century lithograph and telling you don’t worry be happy; this is the Jesus telling you what exactly it means to be a disciple. Now – before you start squirming, let me posit this: Jesus isn’t telling us to turn our backs on our families, because we know this text was written around the time the Temple was destroyed, and when it was quite dangerous to be a Christian. The author of Mark is reminding his audience when one enters the baptismal covenant, we are not only born into a new life when we rise up out of the water, but we are received into the body of Christ. Not just the corporal, but the spiritual, born of faith. To what he calls our attention is a broader dimension of relationships. You have your father, mother, sisters and brothers, and extended biological family, but you are also part of a greater family that is called by faith in Christ. The person who performs God’s will is the one, Jesus says, who is truly family to him. Again, this pronouncement does not dissolve family loyalty but reminds us that devotion to God’s purpose for each of us should be at the top of our lists. When we love God we love one another – our families and our friends.

I see all around me the body of Christ. And this, I’m pretty sure was how he envisioned this new family of his.

Is this how you see it? Or, did you wander about in a spiritual desert trying to figure things out on your own? I know I did.

Growing up, I thought only good people went to church – and I felt I wasn’t good. Why? I didn’t like the way people looked at me when I was in church. I felt they didn’t like me because I didn’t have the nicest clothes, didn’t have gloves and a hat. I didn’t like those people. I didn’t know at the time it was pity they were throwing my way. It was easier to pick up a bible and read, pour through Butler’s lives of saints, whisper my rosary in the dark when everyone else was asleep, and couldn’t hear me or ask questions. I felt I didn’t need to go to church and sit with a bunch of strangers; what could they know about me or my belief except what they saw? This was between God, the Angels, the Saints and me. Oh yeah, Jesus, too. One of my high school friends recently told me that she didn’t like organized religion because of the politics and the hypocrisy. Guess what, neither do I, and many more people, and that’s a good reason to come together and change it so that it truly models and mirrors the Kingdom of Heaven where everyone is welcome and everyone is loved.

I eventually realized, and if you strayed off the path as I did, that being spiritual takes a long-term commitment; it takes preparation and it is by no means expedient. It doesn’t get you to God any quicker than being a member of a faith community. And you needed a community to guide and nurture, to share. I’ve discovered that it is a component of this multi-faceted person of faith called a Christian. There are days and moments when we get the message, and there are the other days. But we may be assured that Christ is with us no matter what, and you and I are together in this. I’ve seen it in right action by you, this very week. How? We come together every Sunday morning to hear our history, to give thanks and praise and, most importantly, to share the Agape, the love feast that is given to us when we encircle this table and take the bread and wine that is Christ. Then we go over to coffee hour, catch each other up – and we go home to what we call the real world. What happens next? One some days, we make sandwiches to share in the neighborhood, we show our love to a member of the community who has been in hospital, bringing meals and comfort, greetings from the parish. We tend the garden that feeds the hungry, we welcome curious newcomers and invite them back, we share our physical buildings with the community, we model Christ and the Good News by small things that we do as a family.

Who are my mother and brothers? They are everywhere I look. And it makes me glad.

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2 thoughts on “I Love my Family”

What can a Jewish Atheist say to such a spiritual and deep abiding belief in good and joy? I say you are a woman, and organized religion was a conscious effort to make women subservient and inadequate. It was the politics of fear, and it started with Abraham, and is ongoing especially today with Islam and the ignorance of the likes of Rick Santorum, and all the other vicious creepy men who want to tell women to stay pregnant, have every baby, and listen to what your husband says. You are a woman who believes in yourself and that you are special in spite of all the institutions and smarmy men trying to dominate your interpretation of goodness and joy. The hypocrisy of these institutions is astounding. However, here I am reading your sermon even though I am not Christian, and applauding your unshakable determination to bring comfort to the world. Bravo for a your refreshing words, and your desire to help your congregation. Are you a spiritual adviser? I know I sound like a broken record, but it is through Howatch’s works that I can see that the language of religion does give individuals a framework to discover G-d. Then I go back to being agnostic, and knowing that the older I get the worse the injustice seems, and that G-d may exist, but she may not be able to intercede. How can anyone explain the holocaust, and believe in G-d? TY for publishing your sermons. I have enjoyed your refreshing views since we met on FB.

It’s a sad fact that people take the free will given to us to make our lives better and honor creation and turn it into a means for selfishness and evil. Those people cannot see G__D in creation, refuse to acknowledge G__D, and use G___D as a weapon. It took the world too long to open its eyes to what was happening in Europe from 1939-45, and so many suffered because of it. Too many people either didn’t know what was really going on or pretended not to know for fear of their own lives. And then we have the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto, Dietrich Bonhoffer, Cardinal Roncalli, Raul Wallenberg and others who we will never know about but tried to stop what was going on. I wonder what it will take to rise against tyranny and evil. I’m only one person, but know there are many more like you and me that want right action and peaceful co-existence. Shalom!